The Obsidian God
by Colonel-Mustard1990
Summary: The tale of an archeological expedition to an uncharted moon
1. I

Alternate title: "What happens when Colonel Mustard reads too much Lovecraft."

The Obsidian God

**I**

I had at one point in my life resolved that I would not speak of the truth behind my ill-fated and somewhat infamous expedition to Taria-07.4. I had vowed that I would spend the rest of my years attributing the demise of my unfortunate colleagues on the expedition to an attack from Batarian corsairs and keep the truth of the matter, however shocking and terrible it may be, from the wider galaxy. However, recent claims made by Commander Shepard following the foiling of Saren Arterius have a most disturbing correlation with what happened on that misguided attempt I once made to understand the history of the galaxy. While Shepard's claims have been met with derision so far, I feel compelled to break a decade's silence in order to add weight to the Commander's testimony, however horrific a reliving of the horrors I witnessed upon Taria-07.4 may be.

There are some who, upon reading the words you see upon the screen before you, will call me mad for what I now recount, yet I assure you that I am not mad; in fact, I am not a woman of great spirituality, yet I have even prayed to the Goddess that what happened to me was a madness of sorts, but always I come to the conclusion that what happened upon that orb was the truth. A terrible truth that destroyed my already weak faith, and lead me to the conclusion that there can be any divine benevolence that would allow the existence of the horror that lurks beyond the galaxy, where the light of stars is nought but a distant memory, but truth nonetheless.

For those of you who are unaware of what is reported to have transpired upon Taria-07.4, I shall provide you with a brief summary of what is reported to have been the official story of my expedition's end, as I am aware that such a report will earn little remark from the galaxy as a whole. During a dig of what we believed at the time to be ruins of Prothean origin, we suffered an assault of most singular viciousness from Batarian pirates. I was the sole survivor of those upon the moon's surface, while Captain Tharrix's ship, the doughty _Apien Strider_, was badly damaged during the attack by the freebooters' vessel. Both the good Turian and I, along with the remaining crew of the _Strider_, swore by this account, and Captain Tharrix had his ship repaired before any questions could be asked about the highly unusual damage it had sustained.

It was clear to any who spoke to me in the months following the incident that I had suffered a great shock, one not unreasonably attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder. When I made it clear that I wished to have an early retirement from my career in archaeology and make a general retreat from Thessia's capital, Ayara, no questions were asked as to why. But the truth is far more horrific than a mere corsair attack; it is what has caused me, over the last ten years, to lose entire nights of sleep or to have them consumed by nightmares. It is something that my team and I discovered through simple misfortune, and a promise of a most terrible fate for the entire galaxy, one that will bring the entirety of civilisation as we know it crashing down upon us in a cacophony of fire, bloodshed and death.

The tale of what lead us to the benighted globe of Taria-07.4 began approximately three months before we launched the expedition, and was sparked by the donation of an artefact to University of Ayara's archaeology department. The donor, an Alliance Captain by the name of Daniel Creek, had discovered it whilst in pursuit of a pirate vessel that his ship had damaged some days earlier; in desperation, the corsairs had attempted to go to ground in the barely charted Taria-2045 system, but the good Captain tracked them down to a moon of the system's seventh and most far-flung planet, Taria-07. In the lee of a gas giant that was once a failed star, he and his crew of marines despatched the pirates who chose to fight to the death rather than surrender, and whilst there he found an object of most curious nature half buried in the reddish sand of the moon, one which in his limited archaeological experience he guessed to be of Prothean origin. Unsure of what to make of it, he resolved to convey it to the University of Ayara where it might be better examined, impelled to take it to us thanks to a past acquaintance with one of my colleagues.

The artefact itself was a most curious thing; made from a dark metal of an alloying hitherto unseen, it stood approximately a foot in height, was of a cylindrical shape around its base. Its top split into four quarters that formed a rough petal shape around its top, making a basin of sorts that was topped by a metal of brassy colour. Scans for energy signals or radiation found that it was entirely inert, and it was impossible to ascertain what it was; theories ranged from it being a holographic projector to a mere ornament, each of them equally credible given that we knew so little of its origin and purpose, and we were unwilling to attempt to dismantle it considering its age and value. In no short order, it was decided that an expedition to Taria-07.4 was to be undertaken, and I volunteered to lead it; it had been some time since I had taken part in such an endeavour, and while my desire for a more relaxed position as a tutor had grown with my age and advance into my Matron years, a good measure of my youthful passion for adventure still remained.

In no short order, I had several contacted several old friends and colleagues from various academic establishments across the galaxy who I knew would be interested in such work. Soon enough, I had gathered myself a small cadre of volunteers from relevant fields of academia; Professor Joren Kallos, an expert in geology and excavation hailing from Sur'Kesh, Doctor Kettil Halstein of Elysium, a specialist in archeo-technology and Doctor Ralla T'Korey from my own department in the University of Ayara, one of the finest linguists and translators the university had. I had also hoped to recruit the young Liara T'Soni for our dig, but she declined, citing several promising leads on other Prothean sites in the Artemis Tau cluster; at the time, I was somewhat irritated that I would not be able to have such a brilliant archaeologist accompanying us, but in retrospect I am glad that those other leads spared an intelligent young woman the soul-crushing revelations of the horror beyond magnitude we uncovered upon that moon.

Once I had gathered our small band of academics, we procured the equipment that would be needed for our dig, funded by a generous stipend from the university. We acquired means to cut and bore through rock of various types, along with a decent amount of medium-yield explosives should any blasting become necessary. Along with that, we also managed to get hold of a powerful, heavy-duty scanner usually used in mining operations; such a device would enable us to see through several hundred metres of rock in order to determine whether there was anything of worth beneath. We also managed to purchase a second-hand shuttle that was in good condition and worthy of flight both in and out of atmosphere, in order to convey both equipment and ourselves to and from the moon's surface; both Professor Kallos and myself were qualified to fly such vehicles, and we agreed that where possible we would work separately on any risky endeavours, meaning that if one or the other of us were injured then it would still be possible for us to return to the safety of a ship and seek medical treatment.

Another essential piece of equipment that I obtained were half a dozen rebreather masks along with supplies of air; according to what Captain Creek had said of the moon during his battle with the cornered corsairs, Taria-07.4 had a breathable atmosphere but a lower ratio of oxygen than on more habitable planets such as Thessia. While he and his brave soldiers had done battle with helmets on in order to avoid risking any blackouts due to overexertion in combat, the air was safe to breath provided that one supplemented their respiration with puffs from an oxygen tank every few minutes to avoid faintness.

I managed to obtain permission to bring along the artefact that Captain Creek of the Alliance had donated to the university, on the chance that it might be some kind of dormant technology that we might find useful. The idea was met with a little resistance from my peers, which was unsurprising considering its incalculable value; not only this, but a Doctor T'Ravey was quite insistent on her theory that it was merely an ornamental burner of some kind for oils, and had even gone so far as to fashion a duplicate out of clay. I have it on good authority that the design became quite popular amongst the citizenry of Thessia as a decoration not long after we departed; indeed, I received one made from painted ceramics just a few years ago, but as soon as I could I smashed it. Knowing the awfulness of the design's origin, and the horror that we inadvertently unleashed with the artefact it was modelled from, I could no more bear to keep it in my home than I could think to live with a rabid Varren.

Along with our equipment, we also had need of a ship to convey us to Taria-07.4. After a few enquiries as to whether a private vessel could be chartered, I came into contact with a Captain Tharrix, a Turian who had retired from service in the Hierarchy's Navy to hire out his ship for private ventures. His vessel, the aforementioned _Apien Strider_, was a now-defunct frigate that had had a good number of its mass-driver batteries removed in favour of more space for passengers and cargo; nevertheless, he assured me that its profile as a military ship alone had been more than enough to deter several would-be attackers, and that his small crew, mostly Turians, were some of the finest sailors in the galaxy. I will admit that I took a great liking to him on our first meeting, and upon making a few checks to make certain that he might not simply take the highly valuable Prothean artefacts we could find for himself, found that he had been honourably discharged after serving the mandatory time in the Hierarchy with no black marks to his name and even a minor decoration for valour; my instincts of his singularly trustworthy nature were, vindicated, and it is thanks to this same vindication that I am able to give this account today. I like to think that I might well have pursued an acquaintance with him that went beyond this one professional meeting after our work had been concluded, were it not the case that things had ended as shockingly as they did. As it is, I believe he did as I did and retired once we returned to civilised space, where we try to fools ourselves into thinking that the horrors that we encountered do not seem to loom quite so colossal.

The Taria-2045 system was situated almost on the opposite side of the galaxy to Thessia, in the Maroon Sea cluster, and our journey time, between relay-hopping and short-ranged FTL jumps, was estimated to be a good seven days. The journey on the _Strider_ was not unpleasant, with the former frigate being retrofitted for greater comfort than a military vessel. Captain Tharrix's crew were of a generally agreeable nature even if the galley's chef, a Turian, was much more used to preparing food for dextro-amino crewmembers and thus the catering was somewhat lacking. Nonetheless, I enjoyed conversing with the crew, who were willing to treat my amateurish interest in the workings of their ship with good humour, and the flirting between Doctor Halstein and Doctor T'Korey made for an entertaining diversion.

Soon enough, we found our way to the Taria system. As far as we knew at the time, we were the fourth group of visitors to that star system, the first being Taria T'Hari, the Asari explorer who mapped it, the second being the pirates Captain Creek had pursued, who were followed shortly by the captain himself. In truth, the system had had a visitation far more terrible than could be imagined in ancient aeons long past, but were blind to such revelations, their nature of such antipathy to our naïve ways of thinking that we could not even give them consideration.

Taria-07.4 was easy to locate; the gas giant was the seventh planet from the system's sun, and finding the fourth of its five moons was a simple task. As soon as the _Apien Strider_ had fallen into a comfortable orbit over the coordinates that Captain Creek had provided as to the locations of his artefact, we prepared our shuttle and set out. The journey from ship to moon was swift, taking only a few minutes with the able hand of Professor Kallos at the controls. Soon enough, the innards of our shuttle shuddered with the shock of impact, and the sense of trepidation and excitement shared between the four of us was palpable. With a hiss of air as the pressure within our shuttle matched that of the air without, the door opened and gave us a view of the surface of Taria-07's moon.

There is, in the mythos of an ancient civilisation of Earth's continent of Europe, a story of a place named Tartarus, a barren, abyssal wasteland of gloom where the souls of the dead depart to. Such a comparison is the only one I feel is adequate to describe the desolation of Taria-07.4, a barren and lifeless wasteland of greyish, sandy rock that stretched before us in such great emptiness that, simply by standing there, one felt utterly insignificant. Several miles away were hillocks of surprising uniformity in their composition, their forms difficult to discern in the gloom that surrounded the planet; the only light came from the weak glow of the planet the moon orbited, the muggy heat in the stale air coming from the failed star and not the planet's sun, hidden as it was by the bulk of Taria-07.4 itself. The brown dwarf loomed upon the moon's horizon like some great, viscera-gorged tyrant, a deep and bloody crimson despite its stellar classification, begrudgingly casting weak, hot light over the world.

Perhaps I was foolish and naïve to think that there could be nothing dangerous lurking within the abyssal depths of Taria-07.4. The truth was far, far worse, than that, and looking back upon the terrible events that would transpire in the next few days of our ill-fated dig, I wish most sincerely that our attempts to search the world for artefacts of value had yielded nothing whatsoever.


	2. II

**II**

Our first attempts at searching our immediate vicinity yielded poor results. While we hardly expected more artefacts like the one that had set us on our course to be poking out of the sands, I was most disappointed with the singular lack of any evidence of infrastructure or other items that we found; the state of superlative preservation of the relic we had found had suggested an unusual hardiness in the craftsmanship of its nameless makers, and so we believed that any ruins they had left behind would be in a similar state.

Though our initial survey did little to help us, our next step of using the ground-penetrating radar to see if there was anything buried beneath the surface was far more successful. Actually removing the scanner from our shuttle was a feat unto itself, as while the moon's relatively meagre gravity lightened the heavy weight of the equipment, the thin air made our exertions all the more taxing and whilst moving it we had to stop more than once to take some breaths from our supplementary oxygen tanks. Professor Kallos fared the worst of us, his Salarian physiology finding the dry and somewhat rancid air particularly disagreeable. To his credit, he persevered with the task and helped us get the scanner into a position that would allow us the greatest overview of the ground beneath us. I made a mental note to see if I could borrow one of the pallets that I had seen the crew of the _Strider_ use to transport heavy equipment.

We allowed Professor Kallos a few moments to regain his breath before we activated the scanner. Within moments the radar had indicated that not too far from our position, just a few metres below the surface, an object of a metallic composition was buried. Considering that the ground we were working on had been identified by my Salarian colleague to be of a sedimentary nature, naturally occuring metals of any kind were highly unusual and we were quite certain that we had found something of interest.

We marked off the indicated area where we would dig and set to work. We refrained from using explosives to blast our way past the layers of sand and stone that separated ourselves from the item we wished to unearth, and instead used more old-fashioned means to expose it to the open air without causing any harm to the object. While the excavation was tedious work, and particularly tiring thanks to the poor quality of Taria-07.4's air, our excitement at discovering an artefact that might be Prothean in origin, or perhaps even from some older civilisation, spurred us on. By the end of the first day of work, we failed to actually reach it, and instead made a retreat back to the _Apien Strider _halfway through the moon's night cycle when fatigue proved too much.

The night time that we worked through on Taria-07.4 was of a most curious nature; where on most celestial bodies day is the time a celestial body spends facing towards its system's primary star and night is the time it spends facing away from it, Taria-07.4's close proximity to the brown dwarf, and that planet's distance from the Taria-2045 system's primary star meant that under the dim red illumination of the brown dwarf the moon was far warmer, but when it span away from Taria-07 to face the brighter but far further sun, the planet was lit with more light but was much cooler. Not only this, but as the moon orbited orbited the world, the world too went around its sun, and there were times when we faced both away from the red dwarf and its sun. This resulted in seemingly random alternations between warm periods dimly lit by Taria-07, cold spells with the brightest lighting (though even that was not enough to dispel the permanent gloomy shroud that covered that accursed orb) and occasions of cold, pitch darkness where neither Taria-07 nor its sun provided any light or warmth. While I might have got used to it eventually, we did not have enough time to adjust to any pattern in its movements; I am sure that any reader who has spent time on a conventional garden world will understand what a bizarre and disconcerting orbital situation that can be to find oneself in.

We covered the start of our excavation site with a kinetic barrier in order to protect it from any dust storms and made our retreat back to the _Apien Strider_. The crew were somewhat puzzled at our elation in discovering a mere lump of metal but were willing to humour our enthusiasm, and once we had rested and recuperated somewhat we returned to the surface as soon as possible. Our progress during the next day was slowed severely when we hit a layer in the sedimentary rock that was of a particularly stubborn disposition, and we departed for the ship due to tiredness with a foot of sandy rock between ourselves and our goal.

It was halfway through the third 'day', if I can even call it that considering the erratic nature of Taria-07.4's day-night cycle, that we finally reached it. With utmost care, we bared to the sky a curved panel of dark metal, its composition similar in nature to that urn-like artefact that set us on our quest to this moon. Much of the uncovering of the artefact was done with brushes used to remove the soft stone without risking any damage to the relic; chisels and drills were used as sparingly as possible, in order to keep the relic in an optimum state of preservation.

As we uncovered it, we found evidence that it had, at some point in its past, sustained severe damage from some unknown antagonist; there was a warping and burnishing on the metal around one edge, suggesting an impact from a focussed-energy weapon like the GARDIAN lasers starships mounted. A sheering along two of its other edges suggested that stress had been exerted to tear it off, possibly caused by the panel's own weight.

Once fully uncovered, we found it to be about two metres in height and of remarkable density; removing it from its place in the ground proved to be slow, even with the moon's low gravity to assist us, but as soon as we were able we set out upon a more thorough examination of the artefact.

Its underside was much the same as its top, and we determined soon enough that it was a block of solid metal; a few taps gave nothing in the way of ringing and thus dashed any suggestions that it might be hollow, and the lack of any kind of folding along the damaged edge further evidenced its solidity. We decided, thanks to the scarring it had gained from some ancient weapon of an unknown civilisation, most likely used to protect a building, bunker or fortification; we quickly dismissed the idea of it being ablative armour on a starship, as its thickness and weight meant that the size of a vessel that would sport it would have to be far too huge to be possible.

As we moved the slab of metal, however, it became apparent that a much more interesting recipient for attention arose. Beneath it was a length of petrified bone, shattered and crushed, no doubt by the plating falling on top of it, and surrounded by a web of circuitry, wiring and machinery that was in a remarkable state of preservation. The fact that the bone had fossilised raised even greater excitement amongst our team than the discovery of our metal artefact; the bone and the technology around it would have been millions of years of age in order to achieve its ossified state, far older than anything of Prothean origin.

The slab of metal, priceless though it was, was quickly abandoned in favour of this new discovery. The next few day stretched into weeks as we brought it to the surface with meticulous care, stopping to rest as little as possible. Once were finished, however, the result was more than worth the effort; we had fossil evidence of a civilisation of sentient beings that existed before the Protheans, something that past archaeological digs had only hinted at.

Its skeleton was in a poor state, many of the bones broken and shattered and its pose contorted, no doubt as a result of that plate of armour falling on top of it, but we managed to take a rough guess to its anatomy. In life, it would have stood approximately five feet in height in a bipedal stance, similar to most sentient beings in the galaxy today. Its legs were double-jointed like those of the Turians, Krogan or Quarians, while its flat, wide skull and large jaw, and its hunched neck was strongly reminiscent of Krogan physiology. What was most notable was that it had two pairs of arms, and after some confusing regarding their overly-twisted pose and state of severe damage, we realised that these were triple-jointed and the longer, lower pair may have been used to aid in locomotion, in a manner similar to the Elcor.

What was of most interest, however, were the cybernetic enhancements that were prevalent throughout its body. We found several circuits that replaced what once had been nervous systems, rubberised synthetic muscles designed to work in concert with now absent musculature, small lenses in the eye sockets that would have enhanced vision and a scan with my omnitool revealed a large amount of circuit boards and computer systems within its brain pan. We surmised that trans-sentientism was most likely a major part of this person's culture, or at least a sub-sect of it, and the incredible state of preservation of his enhancements was a testament to the level of technological advancement they had achieved.

Its discovery sparked a spate of disagreement on what to do. My suggestion of taking the fossil to the _Strider_, where we could keep it safe from any environmental hazards, were quickly countered by Doctor Halstein, who suggested that the crew of the _Strider_ might depart to sell our find and leave us behind. He was quite vehement that this might be the case, though I found it most unlikely that Captain Tharrix would be the sort of person to simply abandon passengers in the middle of uncharted space for personal profit.

Doctor T'Korey suggested a compromise of sealing the specimen within a container, removing risk of the crew seeing it and making designs on its theft, which we agreed to. Professor Kallos, however, had mostly ignored our disagreement in favour of examining a layer of geological strata that we had bared in our efforts to uncover the fossil. Once our dispute was resolved, he raised the matter of the strata's composition; beneath the stone was what appeared to be a layer of ancient ash, marking the presence of immense fires, underneath that what he thought may have been mineralised soil. In combination with the oxygen present on the planet despite the scarcity of any water or living organisms, he suggested that the moon had once harboured life before some great calamity had scoured it from its surface.

Looking at the technological enhancements still preserved on our fossil, we found the thought a sobering one; all of the staggering achievements of innovation we could see on the body had not prevented its people from making the very mortal act of committing a grand-scale atrocity for the sake of victory.

Our party could have finished then. We could have simply taken our find and left to present it to the university; such a discovery would have been more than worth the effort, and we could have abandoned that dark, wretched moon to its secrets. But the desire to unburden oneself of ignorance is a strong driving force for all of the galaxy's peoples, and fuelled by that same want we resolved to forge ahead into the darkness of and carry with us the torch of discovery and curiosity.

Once our specimen was safely covered and stowed, we found that further surveying of the immediate area gave us disappointing results. However, Professor Kallos found his interest piqued by the curiously regular hill that had been lurking on the eastern horizon, like a predator watching its prey from a distance. He pointed out how the shape of the hill seemed inconsistent with the sedimentary rocks that characterised this region of the moon, its uniform shape suggesting either an igneous formation or, perhaps, a buried structure. As soon as that idea was aired, our minds were made up; our equipment was stowed aboard the shuttle once more, and we moved our dig site from the spot in the desert where the artefact and fossil were found to the foot of the hill.

Up close, we realised how huge it was; nearly two kilometres in length but only a few hundred metres in width, like a long flat barrow that the people of ancient Thessia once buried their dead in. A single scan with our mining scanner revealed what we had all hoped for; a vast deposit of metal, of such density that we could not penetrate its outer layer and so huge that our initial scan was unable to cover either end. We landed on the northern end after that, finding that the outer metallic shell tapered to a sharp point, while on the southern side ended in several metallic 'fingers' that lead deeper into the ground. Once we had an idea of the massive structure's layout, we decided the most plausible theory was that it was a bunker of some kind; it would explain the thick layers of protection that covered it, and Doctor T'Korey hypothesised that the fingers that lead into the ground below it may have once functioned in a similar manner to the roots of a plant, filtering moisture from the soil to provide the inhabitants with drinking water.

We decided that the point in which we entered the bunker was to be through the 'roots', where we thought it would be likely to find a way to enter it. Once we decided on a point of entry, we put our explosives and mining equipment to use and blasted our way through the side of the hill. In just a few days, we managed to excavate a tunnel beneath the armoured shell of the bunker, coming up against a wall of metal of the sort that we had unearthed at the first dig site.

Expanding outwards from that, we managed to dig ourselves a small cave underneath it, and it was on the third day from hitting the outer layer of the structure that we found a bulkhead. It was partially opened, and most likely thanks to its age, relatively easy to force all the way.

We lit flashlights on our omnitools, and stepped into the unknown heart of darkness.


End file.
